Battle Scars
by Forever.Half.Full
Summary: C & Z grew up together before boarding school. They kept in touch, including a senior year exchange to their old hometown school. She left after graduation. Years later, Zach becomes a famous singer's bodyguard. So what's so wrong? Short contest version.
1. Chapter 1

"Who are you?"

Six year old Zachary Goode looked up. He shrugged. "Call me Zach." Even at such a young age, he had the smirk Cameron Morgan would later fall into a love- hate relationship with.

He chose to ignore the implied _What are you doing in my sandbox? _as she inched farther and farther away from him. Farther still until she had to rise to sit on the wooden rim of her favorite childhood playground feature. Ha he been in touch with his feelings, like she, he would have come to the same conclusion many years earlier: love at first sight, even though to any and all onlookers, it appeared to be anything but.

"Don't worry," he said, "I don't bite... Unless provoked." He winked, sounding more like his older cousin, the high school player, than his kindergarten self. In fact, it was a line he picked up- no pun intended- straight from James, the cousin who lived with his family. And even though it wasn't original, it became a sort of inside joke between the two.

He said it before he kissed her the first time, at age twelve. He bit her bottom lip anyways, just to make her laugh. Her beautiful laughter was a sound he didn't hear much around that period, what with her father disappearing and their impending departure to separate boarding schools. Later, when she called him a liar for saying he didn't bite, he told her that he only bit when provoked, and he was most definitely provoked. She had rolled her eyes. God, those beautiful eyes.

Winter break of their sophomore year, she wouldn't even look at him in the airport. They had taken a short break, but he was fully intending on getting back together. He tried to hug her, but she wiggled out of his grasp. "Remember?" he had asked. "I don't bite."

"Yeah?" she argued. "Well maybe I do." And with that, she stood up on tip toe and bit his nose, hard. She took in the blood pouring from his nose. He took in the tears pouring from her eyes, the culprit being only one possible thing: heartbreak. As much as it hurt him to admit it, she had been close with someone while they were they opposite. And it had hurt her. For one sick second, he was glad they felt the same, that they were both hurt. But then, as her tears got to him and wrenched his heart out of socket, he knew there was a difference: while she only felt her pain for this mystery boy, he felt her pain and his own.

He had gotten his wish, they were back together by the weekend. During their senior year, the Blackthorne Institute had its second exchange with the Gallagher Academy. Instead of learning at one of their schools, though, it was a year- long cover- maintaining exercise at Cammie and Zach's old school.

Being more widely accepted as a couple- because to their hometown, Zach and Cammie were one, like conjoined twins, having been together almost six years, and friends for twelve- they grew even closer. Seemingly almost impossibly so to their friends. Now, after the fact, Zach saw how stupid he was to put everything he had into their love and their bond, into _her. _

A wise man- his father, actually- had once told him that the closer you get to your true love, the farther apart the pieces of your heart will shatter. He passed it off as nice sounding but untrue. He and Cam had laughed about it, and she reminded him not to be sad when things were over, but happy they had happened. Which made his conflicted feelings now only so much more cliché. That thought made the fragments of his heart clench. His Cammie, his Gallagher Girl, loved clichés, coincidences, and irony. It was part of what made her herself, like her beautiful, breathtaking dirty blonde hair, or those amazing sapphire orbs, or even her polite tone for adults and the honeyed sarcasm she used for her peers.

She had run away once their graduation after party was finished. She was the valedictorian, with a billion and one job offers from AlphaNet companies around the world, yet she took none of them. Now there was some irony for you: the girl who had everything took nothing when she took off.

In a desperate attempt to derive himself of depressing thoughts, he plopped down onto his leather sectional and flipped on the TV. American Idol was on. He could live with it, even if it _had_ happened to have been _her_ favorite show. _What's wrong with that thought, Zach? This is like the little kid what_- _item- doesn't- belong game. In my world,it's the past tense. She _was_ my girlfriend, but still _is_ the love of my life. _

Realizing his bigger problem was the fact that he was talking to himself, he shut up with his inner ramblings and turned his attention to the television once more. Somehow, he hadn't known that tonight was the American Idol finals, and, considering he was still a co-worker of Macey McHenry, that was a pretty big feat.

A new, familiar girl came onto the screen, and it took a second for him to realize that this was exactly what a bone- thin but far curvier version of his ex- girlftriend would look like. When they flashed her name and the number to vote for across the bottom of the screen, he knew his hunch was correct. She had entered as ikl;Katie a;rnewcjr Katie rocks like cheese rekajkkkatie albrecht rocks like cheese son a unday ,orni Morgan Matthews.


	2. Chapter 2

"Zachary, what a surprise," the Director stated dryly as Zach walked into his office many years later, the spot on his nose where she had bitten him now just a reminder of what Morgan and Goode had had long ago. He called it his battle scar, from the war of their love.

"Not really. You called me in here, and even if you hadn't, your doormat would have told you I was coming."

"On to more important matters, I have a mission for you," he announced, barely sparing Zach a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"Well duh, why else would you call me into your office?" he smirked.

"To fire you, which I very well may do if you don't drop the cockiness," Mr. Jacobs retorted.

"But you wouldn't, you need me for this mission, remember?"

That earned him a full- out death glare, the first look he had gotten from behind his boss's computer screen since entering the room.

"The American Idol winner from last night. Morgan Matthews. She's the protectee, you're the protector. Got it? Now shoo."

He didn't say it, so Zach didn't bother to correct him: it was Cameron Morgan he would be protecting, not Morgan Matthews. Because even though the latter was an utterly, irreversibly changed version of the former, in his mind, they were still one and the same, interchangeable.

He knocked. She answered. Just like that day, so many years ago, when he had knocked on the door to her heart, and she had answered. Boy, had she.

"So I'm your bodyguard. What a coincidence. You used to love those." Y_ou used to love me. _

But like that day in the sandbox years ago, they ignored the underlying subliminal conversation they both heard and neither could deny.

She tried to deny it by denying him. "I wasn't actually looking for a bodyguard. My manager says it makes me appear weak. I was looking for you, actually. I told Jacobs to send you to me." _I talked to my former potential boss, but my boyfriend of six years wasn't good enough to keep in contact with._

They ignored the extra, unspoken sentence yet again

But some things weren't so easy to ignore, and he had to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room. "Why'd you leave?"

Never had she been so honest in her life. "You had my heart, and I needed it back."

"Why? What was so wrong about our love?"

"I had to give it to someone else." Her gaze was settled, unfocused, on the wall behind him, somewhere above and to the left of his head. His Tiny Dreamer was dreaming again.

"Does that person still have it?"

Her gaze snapped back to his face quickly and she bit her lip, nodding seriously. He sighed, running his hand back through his hair

"In that sandbox... I thought I found love at first sight." her voice rang through the silence of her home, her voice low and gravelly with the lateness of the hour but laced with the clarity of someone who had thought over her words for a long while, lost plenty of sleep over them.

"Well you didn't. Because love doesn't exist! It is a misconception. Miscommunication between the heart and the brain, misinterpretation of feelings. I learned that a while after you left, around the time I realized you weren't coming back. Because if we weren't in love, if what we had wasn't love, I don't know what is, and to be in love, you have to be together, at least in spirit. And we weren't." he said with a fiery passion.

"I did love you. Not only did you have a special _place_ in my heart, you _had_ my heart. But I had to leave because... because I loved someone else more."

"The same one who has your heart now?" _The one I'll never measure up to?_

She nodded, again, and this time he felt that they hadn't ignored life's italics, her nod was acknowledging both what was said and what wasn't. And somehow, that hurt him even more.

"Who was it?" He was dying to know who was more important than the one who knew her better than she did herself.

"Sean Connery." It was a small whisper, but it was enough.

"Now that's irony. He will never be a spy, but pretends to be, while you will always be a spy and pretend not to be. No, you try to stop being a spy, and he tries to become one. I knew you _loved_ irony, but I didn't know you _lived_ it!"

"You don't understand, Zach," she said quietly.

"I don't understand! What is there to understand?" he roared loudly.

Feet padded down the stairs quietly until a toddler appeared at their feet.

"Mommy? Quiet. Late." The little boy rubbed sleep out of his little blue eyes, and Cammie picked him up. Zach's mouth fell open.

"Not Sean Connery the actor, Goode. Sean Connery, your son."

And he knew he believed because it was love at first sight all over again.

**Consummatum est! Tis finished. Short, I know. This was for a contest, so it skips A LOT of stuff. It had to be 1000-8000 words, 1-3 chapters, so this is what I'm entering, and when I get 5-10+ chapters, i'll upload the WAY better version. Which will most definitely NOT have the same ending. This was nice for something short that was supposed to center around true love, but for anything else, it would suck. So keep your eyes peeled! **

**Much love...**

** FlamingRain **


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